Linkage 3.0.5 Beta Available

January 21, 2015

I just updated the Linkage 3.0 Beta files. The new version has a bug fix that caused some geared mechanisms to fail in the simulator. This came about because of how I now allow a gear to be placed on an input anchor, but be fastened to another anchor to keep it from rotating. This was necessary to simplify things when a gear was fixed while a link revolved around it. Orbit mechanisms use this type of gearing to drive a chain connected to a planet.

I am working on a blog page that will contain GIF animations and links to all of the sample mechanisms. This will eventually let me create new samples without users needing an update to get them. I can also post user mechanisms if anyone sends me files for them.

One user sent me a few files of a malfunctioning mechanism. It would not simulate because of the simplicity of my simulator – I can’t treat a group of connected links as a single link. Their mechanism had a linear actuator moving a link off of another, but the group of them was then connected to something else. My simulation code cannot adjust the length of the actuator, move the attached links, then use the actuator and the connected links as one whole link. In other words, no single piece of the mechanism position could be predicted alone. A few links together had to act as a single link in order to simulate the mechanism.

I’ll post a picture of the mechanism in a post on that specific subject.

Anyhow, I replied to their email but never heard back about my request to show a picture of the mechanism on this blog. So…

Let this be notice. Unless someone tells me not to use it, any mechanism sent to me might get used as an example, good or bad, on this blog.